Atheism, at its most inclusive, describes anyone who has no belief in gods. From even this basic understanding, it is remarkably difficult to see how atheism could be expected to produce any action from an individual atheist. There is no causal line from the absence of a single belief to any other belief or action, be it good or bad. Even explicit atheism (the denial of gods) does not imply any further belief or action. If we say this for atheism, in order to be consistent, we must also say this for theism. Theism (the belief in gods), as a single belief, does not entail any other beliefs or actions by the individual theist. A theist may believe in the philosopher’s god, a non-interventionist god, Allah, the trinity, or a whole pantheon of pagan gods. But even these basic beliefs about the nature of gods are additional to the initial claim of theism, not derived from it. Taking the example of the Thirty Years war, the Pope would have us blame theism for the conflict. However, given both sides of the conflict were theists this conclusion makes little sense. The true dividing factor was the different religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, which each side maintained.  My contention is that while atheism and theism are blameless in the great atrocities of history, ideology and religion should be held to account.

Ideologies and religions are not single beliefs but whole belief systems and as such can serve as powerful motivators for individuals. While each belief in the system may not be cause for action, the combination of various beliefs produces stimulus for the individual. A single belief in the existence of Hell does little to motivate a person unless further beliefs such as the nature of sin, the possibility of salvation, and a divine overseer are part of the overall belief system. Nazi Ideology, to take the Pope’s example, is a powerfully motivating belief system. What gave the Nazi party its appeal in post WWI Germany was its staunch conservatism and a resistance to the liberal direction of the Wiemar republic. The Nazi’s were anti-communistic, anti-atheist, anti-homosexual, anti-immigrant, and anti-semetic. While not necessary a Christian movement, the Nazi party endorsed Christianity and, in turn, received support from the more conservative Catholic and Luthern churches. The Catholic church even assisted in tracking down those of Jewish descent by opening its records on marriages and births to the Nazi party. While there were Christians who opposed Nazism the record of Christianity in Germany is one of acquiescence and support rather opposition or resistance.

Taking the historical record of Christianity in Hitler’s Germany and applying the Pope’s recent “reasoning” we should conclude that theism is to blame for Nazism. Note that this would not only include the denominations of Christianity that supported Hitler but also those who objected to Nazism. It would also include Muslim and Hindu theists who had nothing to do with the atrocities. The Pope’s “logic” would also have us blaming the Jewish theists who were aggressively persecuted by the Nazi regime! This conclusion is rightly considered ludicrous as it lacks all subtlety by failing to distinguish between those guilty of the crime and those victimised by it. This is the gaping flaw I wanted to identify. It is not theism or atheism that is to blame for Nazi Germany but primarily the ideology of Nazism and secondarily the religions of Catholicism and Lutheranism.

What we all should realise is it religions and ideologies that are to blame in these historical atrocities not individual beliefs. In the case of the Soviet Union it was a type of Marxism, not atheism, which was the problem. During the Thirty Years war it was types of Christianity which were the problem, not theism. In Hitler’s Germany it was a type of political movement and on 9/11 it was a type of Islam. In no way is either atheism or theism to blame for these devastating events. One final point, I think we atheists contribute to this misperception by setting up atheism in opposition to religion – this is a mistake. Theism is the opposite of atheism and we should make this point clear in all our communication on the subject. We should also reserve our criticism of the historical record for the ideologies and religions that are at fault, and not try to extend this critique to cover all types of theism.

However, you develop an unfair bias of a newspaper when you peruse it mainly to find new nonsense to write about in your blog. You ignore all rational articles about politics\current affairs\crossbows to the face and concentrate only on articles that guarantee a spout of vitriol frothy enough to incur a transparent sense of self-righteousness. And as a result, your perception is that the chosen paper exists only to print stories about religion, druids and the supernatural. Unfair, since the Metro regularly dishes out reasonably informative articles about modern science and astronomy.

My last fodder was about druids fixing roads, and it’s hard to have sympathy for a publication that will indulge itself with such asinine balls. But almost the next day, indeed it could have been the next day, the Metro printed this. Our very own Phil Plait, who I have happily if briefly met (and who disillusioned me slightly by expressing a certain reserve for District 9, damn it Phil when will you see that guys in alien power armour are the next Casablanca) blogged about a photo of a lunar rock that had rolled into a crater. The Metro picked this up and wrote the small piece to which I just linked.

They could have taken Phil’s approach, which was “OMFG space is awesome and beautiful”. And they sort of did. But they also titled the article “Proof that golf-playing God shot a hole-in-one on the Moon?”

Facedesk.

Why, why would you do this? What manner of journalist would take a story about a lunar event of some rarity and make it into terrifyingly inept pun-based  pseudoscience? Am I only this annoyed because I loathe religion? No, I don’t think I am. The image itself deserved a tone of joyous solemnity (and sure, Phil played with a few golfing metaphors himself before getting into the science of it; I imagine the Metro stole the idea.) But that wouldn’t have been enough to make a prominent article; only invoking God could elevate the story into something worthy of News. Not content with printing stories about supernatural druidical assholery, they feel the need to take stories of astronomical wonder and create supernatural assholery. ” . . . this picture suggests that the Almighty could have had a round or two on the grey course – and even scored a hole-in-one.” What? You can almost hear the satisfied smirk as it drips off the journo’s face and congeals in the folds of his Armani tie.

You were so close to redeeming yourself, Metro. Now I hate you hate you hate you.

Print news, fine. Even if that means factually reporting on nonsense, fine. But taking science and jokingly inserting God? I will end you. With sticks.

Is it better to have flexible, socially contextual morals that may dip below what many people view as laudable behaviour as a result of free will and personal choice . . . or is it better to have a uniformly high moral standard followed, in part or even in whole, as a result of fearing the perceived consequences of not following it?

Of course, you might say that I’ve used Wordification to bias the issue somewhat – and because I have no higher power to feel accountable to I’m perfectly happy to lie, and say that I didn’t bias the point in the slightest.

The question, I suppose, is how worthy or altruistic can a high moral standard be truly taken to be when it’s prescribed rather than acquired? It becomes little more than Utilitarianism if your moral compass is constantly aware that behaving immorally will result in hell, or a few lost brownie-heaven points from God. You’re not acting morally, you’re just protecting your own skin – which is exactly what I would do, of course.

Clearly the issue is fiercely complex after even a cursory glance. Because so many moral codes adopted by secularists could, likewise, be viewed as contextual to the consequences of breaking these same codes. If there was no judicial system with which to label certain acts as wrong, and mete out appropriate punishment, I highly doubt the society in question would remain in moral stasis. I’m happy to say that I’d likely have done, or tried to do, entirely unwholesome things without the restraining hand of Authority hovering over my balls. Theists may have their fear of God to instil a sense of morality; atheists may have their fear of getting touched up in jail. It’s just as self-serving.

Of course, the spectrum of morality and immorality operates in realms oft untouched by law; the way you think, they way you treat other people, the little things. A moral stance affects all subtle aspects of your life, not just your unwillingness to kill a guy and then stave in his hips with a pensioner. Let’s take the time I stole £20 from someone in a fast food joint. I walked in and saw the note on the ground by the man’s feet. He’d clearly dropped it and was now waiting, an ignorant score lighter, for his burger. I very briefly wondered if I should tell him, but then I decided not to. I stood next to him, my boot on the note so he couldn’t see it, until he left. And then I picked it up. Why?

Because I like money, because I’m selfish, because I don’t have a conscience that feels bad about such things. There was no legal consequence to my action that I had to fear; the only possible consequence was being discovered, and I felt I could talk my out of it if needs be. I acted in a way that many people might consider immoral, because my morality – under the umbrella of legality – is flexible. Clearly, I don’t think I would just start knifing babies in the chin if murder was legalised. I think I would feel bad. I may not grant the notion of objective morality any time at all, but I can grant that there are trends and broadly universal immoral acts, and judicial consequencialism (what an amazing phrase – I hope I didn’t just make it up) is not the single dam holding back a tidal wave of human sludge. There would be shifts, of course, and a rise in violence and theft, but not everyone would realise that they wanted to break laws just because the laws no longer existed.

What if someone religious was in my place, someone with a highly defined and apparently objective sense of morality? Let’s assume they do what we all know the right thing is – pick up the money and give it to the guy. Bravo! Except, why have you done this? Is it because your morality has been painstakingly constructed, over many years, by exposure to myriad different situations and modes of thought? Or is it because you think that not doing it will get you a disapproving stare from whatever deity you call home? And this is only assuming that we’ve found one of the theists who actually follows their own arbitrary objective morals, to the letter, without questions. As we all know from our sojourns through Youtube, religiously inspired morals and codes tend to be as flexible as their secular counterparts. Lying is fine, it seems, if you’re lying for Jesus.

Allow me a brief bit of poetry. Would you rather be in a hotel which locked from the outside or a barn that locked from the inside? Give me the freedom to plumb whatever depraved and lustful depths I see fit, and I’ll do it as a free man. 

I’ll leave you with this. It’s pretty infuriating, of course. Highlights include:

‘Cherie Booth wasn’t saying that religious people are morally superior to others. She was saying that, as a religious man, he should know better.’ Well, that pretty much IS saying that religious people are morally superior, if she is granting them the power to know right from wrong when a non-religious man apparently would – the reasonable inference suggests – NOT be capable of knowing better. No, only the mystical and nebulous power of !Religion! can instil the ability to Know Better.

*Not actually a riddle.

My girlfriend and her friend ended up talking about God, and my name got mentioned – presumably because I’m just that awesome. My GF, as someone who’s pretty much had her faiths eroded by my niggling arguments (“Shall we get some wine? Also, why would an all-powerful God allow evil to occur?”) wanted her friend to talk to me on the subject. She prepared a short argument and I emailed her my response.

Something I wasn’t aware of until after I’d emailed her was that she is, apparently, very stubborn and will never let go of her beliefs. Which renders debate more or less meaningless, but hey – who knows?

“What is sense? Why can’t open minded thoughts help you accept a possibility of a greater power/energy source named as god?”

I think my GF gave you the wrong impression of my perspective on this issue. I accept the POSSIBILITY of God, or a higher power, simply because it would be scientifically hypocritical to state with certainty that it could NOT exist. Until every iota of the universe has been catalogued, which is almost certainly something we will never do, we cannot posture with certainty on such matters. To state something CANNOT exist is a faith-based position, albeit anthetical to faith IN a God, and as such is a position not often adopted by intellectuals.

So, I can accept the possibility. But with a complete lack of any positive proof, there is no point considering it further. An inability to disprove something is not adequate proof FOR it, otherwise you would have to give equal credence to absolutely every unfalsifiable hypothesis anyone ever makes. Along with your concept of God, you’d have to grant the equal chance of everyone else’s concept of God, along with all supernatural claims. This is without even going into the logical paradoxii that arguments for God tend to invoke, which I’ll go into a bit later..

“Why can’t there be a god?”

I’d need to know more detail about your concept of God to answer this. However, in general, God creates more questions than it answers. Simply using God as a catch-all answer to the mysteries of the universe is unrealistic, because you then have to explain God. You end up with paradoxii of omnipotence, problems of free will, problems of omnicognisance. So tell me more about your perception of God – is it conscious? Insensate? Does it have a specific purpose? What powers does it possess? Is it immortal/eternal/invincible? Is it limited in any sense?

Until I have more detail, though, the simple answer is there COULD be a God – but it’s so vastly unlikely, so internally inconsistent and contradictory by most human accounts, that there’s no point in pursuing it. As we on the internet say, pictures or it didn’t happen. The onus of proof is ALWAYS on the other side to substantiate God – NOT on me to disprove.

“By opening your mind and thoughts you accept possibilities, by accepting possibilities you become more knowledgeable, and by being more knowledgeable you are naturally more intelligent.”

Accepting possibilities is fine. It’s what drives scientific endeavour and progress. But you don’t actually become more knowledgeable until you have proved these possibilities as something workable. There’s some famous quote, I think from Richard Dawkins, which is more or less “Be open-minded, but not so open that your brain falls out.” Wondering how things work and having a spirit of enquiry keeps discovery constant; however, that is no reason to hang on to the impossible or the unworkable. The historical precedent is that poorly understood natural phenomena attributed to the supernatural (for example, the various cultural pantheons to whom natural forces and processes were attributed via individual deities, as opposed to monotheism where a single entity controls everything – this seems to be what you’re postulating) eventually become explained by scientific means. The age of simply hypothesising something which sounds about right is long gone. The age of empiricism demands proof, repeatable observation, before a possibility becomes workable. Otherwise the whole thing simply collapses in disarray under the weight of countless “possibilities” which can only be accepted because they cannot be completely disproved.

That is the nature of science, of course. It operates on inductive reasoning, on extending an assumption from a necessarily limited sample group. However, deductive reasoning – which begins from an axiomatic statement and is thus considered to be more reliable than inductive logic – is never grounded in the real world. Only logical and mathematical constructs can be axiomatic. A famous deduction is “All are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.” However, this deduction relies on inductive empiricism for its axiom. The only way of looking at the world and the universe is by the scientific method; only abstracts, like logic and maths (human constructions) produce axiomatically true results – and these results are definitionally divorced from the real world.

“Where did the first energy source come from?”

We’re working on it

We don’t know. The origins of the universe are pretty trippy to consider. However, given the aforementioned historical precedent of supernatural explanations being superceded, it’s reasonable to assume that we will eventually know – and not knowing NOW doesn’t mean we will NEVER know. Also, not knowing the origins of the universe is comparatively simple when compared to using God as an explanation and then trying to work out how God created itself, or all the other attendant problems with using God to explain anything.

“Do humans have any energy source beyond physics? Why? Why not?”

If human beings have an energy source beyond physics it’s pointless to even speculate as it necessarily wouldn’t be something we could even detect. If we could detect it, it would be an aspect of known physical laws and not metaphysical or supernatural in nature. So, no, humans do not have an energy source beyond physics because the question doesn’t have any actual meaning – you’re asking to verify something which definitionally, as soon as it is verified, STOPS being beyond physics.

“Bear in mind that without self-evidence there is none. With no evidence, you rely on belief. Therefore proof is belief. If belief is your source of proof why can’t you believe in god and use belief as proof.” (I nearly pooped myself when I read that argument.)

That’s a little too much of a logical leap though. Proof is NOT belief. Proof is proof. Belief implies some kind of dependence on the believer for continuation, and gravity doesn’t care if you believe in it or not. Scientists don’t rely on belief or faith, and neither do the things the scientific method discovers.
Your argument dictates that, if belief is a proof, EVERYTHING is real and possible. Jeremy, the unicorn inside Jupiter who controls gravity (but only in this solar system) is real because I have belief in him – and thus proof. And, of course, the concept of God that I believe in that forces all possible Gods to NOT exist (including yours) must be real, because I have belief.

Belief is not the source of proof for scientists, or for me. Repeatable, observable testing and evidence is proof. Proof that is consistent with all previously gathered research. Using belief as proof not only invites a great deal of confusion, it’s demonstrably untrue, and it indicates a lack of any REAL proof for claims. If your proof is belief, you are admitting that you have no concrete evidence on which to go on.

So now, we wait . . .